The olive tree (Olea europea) is an ever green noble tree, native to the warm climate of the Holy Land and the Mediterranean basin. It is short, squat and rarely grows more than seven meters in height with numerous and uneven leafy branches. The silvery green leaves are oblong in shape and a source for many medications. The trunk is gnarled, twisted and becomes hollowed from the inside when the tree reaches an old age. Olive trees are slow growing trees and can survive up to 2000 years. According to the Holy Bible, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane amongst olive trees that still exist nowadays. The age of an olive tree in Crete Island, claimed to be more than 2000 years old, was determined according to tree ring analysis.

Olive trees flourishes in May, millions of tiny white perfumed flowers emerge in groups in front of every single leave. Only about 5% of these flowers germinate to develop into the blessed olive fruit with its sharp bitter taste. Fruits are harvested in September at the green stage to make pickled olives for daily consumption, or left to further ripen to a dark purple color to extract the golden precious olive oil from.

The Olive tree is one of the plants most cited and respected in recorded literature and history. It was an olive branch that Noah’s dove brought back to the ark as a sign of peace, since then both the olive branch and the dove became symbols of peace between all nations. Olive oil was used to anoint prophets and kings, Jesus was anointed with olive oil, and he is called in Aramic, Hebrew and Arabic languages (Messiah) which means (The Anointed). Leafy branches of olive treeswere considered a symbol of abundance, majesty and glory; victors of Olympic Games were and still are crowned with olive branches in Greece. King Salomon decorated the Temple of Jerusalem with cedar and olive wood and lit its lamps with olive oil. Nowadays, churches in the Holy Land use only olive oil to lit the altar’s oil lamps as a symbol of blessing and sign of peace and conciliation between God and mankind.

Olive trees must be pruned every other year to eliminate old infectious branches, thus giving space to new healthier branches to emerge, and to expose the inner part of the tree to sun rays. Sometimes in some pruning methods, the whole trunk of unproductive trees is removed so that new sprouts emerging from the roots can grow to form a new young tree.

At OlivArt we are environmentally friendly, we use only the wood resulting from tree’s pruning throughout all our production process, we never use the wood of illegally rooted out trees. According to legislation in force in the Holy Land, olive trees are a protected species.